Chapter 20 Omar
Omar
I’d fucked up. Well and truly. I had gone into the meeting with Luis and Felix certain that I knew how it would go, but I hadn’t counted on Luis being so far up Felix Suarez’s ass that he’d turned over operations of the Rojas cartel to that man.
When did that happen? Why would Luis give up power like that?
Angel is going to kill me. I tried to negotiate for territory in his stead, and I’d lost what little leverage I had over Luis Rojas. But I couldn’t deal with that right now. The most pressing matter was Lyse and her safety.
I pulled out my phone, happy to have it back instead of a damn burner, and logged into the security system on the island.
I checked all the cameras and found Lyse in the attic, painting.
The tightness in my chest loosened. For whatever reason, both Lyse’s father and fiancé gave her up for dead, and that could only mean that bad was coming our way. Again.
I opened my text messages and sent one to Lili: Staying on the island tonight; I left some things behind.
Be back soon. She responded within seconds that I better be joking, but when I didn’t reply, she tried to call me.
I ignored it. You’re already in trouble, I reminded myself. Might as well go all in.
I drove to the marina and had the attendants refill the tank on the boat.
It was nearing eleven; I would be back with Lyse well before sunrise, as promised.
The thought made me warm, despite all of the unknowns crowding in around me.
Returning to Lyse was the most important thing for now.
I would figure everything else out once I had my arms around her again.
Fifteen minutes later, I was navigating the boat out of the marina and heading in the direction of our island.
My phone rang off and on until I was too far out of range, and my signal fell off.
I would call Lili in the morning and make up some excuse as to why I had to leave.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t coming back…I just needed a game plan first.
Luckily the weather was good, and the water was flat, and the nav put my arrival on the island a full thirty minutes earlier than normal. If I hurried things along, I might catch her before she went to sleep. Maybe—
THWACK!
Pain erupted in my head as I was struck from behind.
I groaned and nearly collapsed, but I gathered my wits as best I could and turned around, swinging at whoever had attacked me.
The man was obviously surprised that I could do so, and I was able to get my hands on him.
I shook him, slamming him into the side of the cabin.
The man was scrawny, but he had an iron pry bar in his hand, and he swung it with precision, smashing it into my forearm, making my arm go numb. “Cabrón,” I snarled and rammed myself into him, knocking him off balance enough that he dropped the pry bar with a clanging thud.
The man struggled beneath me, slapping at me, but I pressed my numbed arm into his throat and pinned him down.
His face turned a bright red, and I watched the panic bloom in his eyes as he realized that he couldn’t breathe.
He bucked, tried to bring his knee up, but despite all his training — if he had any to begin with — I didn’t let up for a moment.
He lost consciousness, and I scrambled off of him to grab the pry bar. I brought it down on his head again and again until the bottom of the boat was slick with blood so dark that it looked black.
I sank down, breathing hard, as my vision swam.
Little dots flickered across my eyes. Reaching up, I touched the back of my head; my fingers came away bloody.
Shit, I have a concussion. I needed to get the boat pointed in the right direction again; I was probably going to need stitches and for someone to watch over me so that I didn’t die in my sleep.
It took far more effort than I wanted to admit to get to the steering wheel, and even longer to be able to read the nav system. My vision kept blurring, and my stomach swooped in a sickening way. I couldn’t pass out on the boat. I wouldn’t pass out on the boat.
I just needed the damn boat to go faster.
Lyse
“You should sleep, mi amor,” Helena said for the twentieth time. “El jefe will be back soon. He can wake you up, if that’s what you want.”
We were sitting on the front porch in a pair of rockers that didn’t look like anyone had ever sat in them before. I had been painting for most of the day, but Helena declared that I’d inhaled enough fumes and hustled me outside to see the moon and breathe the fresh air.
“I’ll wait a little while longer,” I said, “but you can go, if you’re tired.”
Helena reached out and patted my arm. “I’ll stay with you,” she said. “Besides, I like nights like this.”
“Quiet?” I asked.
Her face went tight. “Oh, mi amor, you just jinxed us.”
“Huh?”
“You can't say that it will be a quiet night when you're with the Castillos,” Helena said, absolutely serious. “That's all but a guarantee that it will end badly!”
She's so cute. “I don’t believe in superstitions.”
The older woman gasped, dramatic to a fault. “Not superstitious? Dios mío.”
“I think you’re being—”
The roar of an engine reached us, and I looked out into the darkness, hoping to catch a glimpse of Omar as he brought the boat into the dock. But it quickly became apparent that the boat was going far too fast. I pushed myself to my feet. “What’s he doing?”
Helena stood up too. “He needs to slow down.”
It took me another second to realize that he wasn’t going to slow down, that something was seriously wrong, but then I was tearing toward the beach as fast as I possibly could.
“Get Efrain and Pascal!” I called over my shoulder.
I didn’t need to see Helena moving to know that she was doing what I asked.
The speedboat hit the dock going full tilt; the dock exploded into a pile of ruined, twisted wood, and something vaguely human-shaped was tossed from the wreckage.
I forced myself to move even faster; my feet slogged through the sand.
I barely felt the sting of stepping on chunks of broken seashells. I could worry about that later.
I hit wet sand and kept going; my eyes were on the person floating in the water, just beyond where the boat had flung him out. You can’t swim, I reminded myself, but the water only went up so far until the drop-off. Omar was close enough. I could do it. I would do it.
I heard splashing behind me and nearly let out a whoop of joy: help had arrived. I reached Omar first, and despite the tide threatening to suck me out into endless oblivion, I took hold of him and turned him so that his face wasn’t below the surface of the water.
Even in the water, Omar was solid and heavy, and with the tide, it was hard to hold onto him. Luckily, I only had seconds before Efrain was beside me, helping me. Together, we took him to shore and laid him in the sand.
Pascal was there with a flashlight, and we all swore when he saw how gray he’d become. Omar looked like he’d taken a beating. “This can’t all be from the crash,” I said and looked toward the wreckage. “Pascal, can you get near that thing? See if anyone else was on board?”
I expected pushback, to be honest. If I ever ordered any of my father’s men to do such a thing, I would find myself in my room for at least a week and covered in bruises.
But instead, the man nodded, handed the light to Efrain, and took off running.
It was almost…bizarre for a man to respond in such a way.
I knelt beside Omar and unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands.
I didn’t see any major wounds. Mostly, he had bumps and bruises.
But his forearm had an alarming bruise that was going purple and blue.
I glanced at Efrain, whose eyebrows were cinched together in concern.
“Do you think he—” I held up my hand as if to protect myself.
“Like someone was trying to hit him with something?”
Efrain nodded. “That seems right.” He looked toward where Pascal had run; the man was picking his way across the broken pier as carefully as he could. “Someone snuck aboard and attacked him mid-trip. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Why?”
Efrain looked at me. “If he’d been attacked in Miami, Omar would have had the whole of the Castillo family to back him up. Even if he were blitzed, one text would have brought the horde.”
My father had a handful of loyal men like that—the kind of men who would come running when called—but that number seemed to dwindle year by year. He didn’t inspire the kind of…awe that the Castillo men did. Apá is fickle, I thought. It didn’t motivate men to keep following him.
My fingers, in their gentle search, found a spot of wetness on the back of Omar’s head, and when I pulled back, bright red blood shone in the light. “Mierda,” Efrain swore. “I’ll carry him up to the house. He needs that to be cleaned out…and probably some stitches.”
Efrain did his best to pick up Omar, and I threw my arms around his middle and did what I could to help as well, but the man was deadweight between us, and it was slow going. “Don’t you dare die,” I murmured to him. “You promised I’d see you at sunrise. I’m holding you to that.”
Omar groaned slightly, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Talk to him,” Efrain said. “See if he’ll come around for you.”
I tightened my grip on Omar. “My father did this to you,” I said. “I’m sure of it…but we’re going to get him back, all right? You’re going to open your eyes, and I’ll help you plot against him. You just need to open your eyes, dammit!”